I lost a couple of days at the end of this week trying to push through my latest story on the Mike Miske case.

There’s a cycle. I probably spend a week with an idea about the central theme of a story, then find, review, and collect items of information related to it, finally setting aside several days to actually try to write it. I usually have some idea of what the story will be about and where it will end up, but the only way to really find out is to write it. So I write, think, write some more, which then gives me more of a “feel” of what the story will end up being about.

But in the background, I worried about Feline Friday. By the time Friday arrived, all I had were a few iPhone snapshots of cats in various sleeping poses. I did manage to take a bunch of pictures on Friday, but never found the time to pull the week’s photo gallery together.

But I turned the story in by mid-morning, made a couple of passes through the house and sneaking up on cats with a camera for candid photos.

This week we may remember as the week Bessie started hitting Kinikini back. He’s been a bully the 11 months she’s lived with us. Several times in the day, it just comes into his little feline brain that it’s time to chase Bessie, and so he does, while she retreats under one of several chairs that provide a good defensive position. He postures and tries to whack at her, but she usually is back far enough under the chair that she’s safe from injury. Except to her pride, I would think.

This week, for about the first time, he chased her under a chair, I saw his paws striking out at her, and then I saw a counterattack of her white paws, which backed Kini off a bit. It’s a routine that Ms. Kali has down pat, so Kini no longer tries to push her around, or at least not very often. Instead, he has to check what mood she’s in before he considers when to be Mr. Macho. If she’s not in the mood, she quickly puts him in his place, leaving Kinikini to march away, a displacement lick or two to hide his loss of face. Hopefully Bessie will get that same act down soon.

In any case, more than 24 hours late, here comes Feline Friday…on Saturday!